IVANS: 165% Growth in Claims Download

Carriers are listening to agents’ cries, and have increasingly been enabling claims download transactions, and agents are taking advantage. According to IVANS Inc., over the last 12 months, the number of insurance agents using claims download technology grew 165%.

Today, carriers are sending more than 41,000 claims download transactions per month using IVANS communications platform. This volume reinforces the 80% growth rate that IVANS has seen over the last year in the number of carriers implementing claims download. Activities that can trigger a claims download transaction include: notification of new claims, assignment of a claims adjuster and updates made to claims status or information. By automating the distribution of property/casualty claims information between insurance carriers and agents, both are able to respond more quickly to claims, increasing customer satisfaction. Claims download is also delivering operational benefits, reducing agent calls to carriers’ claims departments, and making claims information more accessible for other uses.

IVANS uses the example of MiddleOak, a carrier for auto, home, umbrella, business, flood, watercraft and specialty insurance, and a member of the COUNTRY Financial group. The carrier recently implemented claims download to help its agent network enhance customer relationships and service levels for agents using the Applied Management System.

“When we looked across our portfolio of potential technology investments, claims download made a lot of sense,” said Sean Sweeney, VP of business systems delivery at MiddleOak. “Working with IVANS, the implementation timeframe would be fairly short, and we believed we could quickly realize the benefits of our relatively modest investment. We rolled out within just three months, and agent feedback has been very positive. Agents appreciate having the latest claims information to serve their customers and are no longer spending hours manually updating claims information in their Applied System’s agency management software. MiddleOak appreciates the opportunity to work more closely with our agents and the efficiency we’ve gained from having a faster claims workflow. We are now in the process of rolling out IVANS claims download to all our agents who use Applied Systems.”

Maggie O’Hara, group VP of product management, IVANS, has been seeing similar growth in the use of commercial lines download and online auto liability insurance verification. “Companies that can respond to customer and market needs more quickly are better-positioned to excel in the current economic climate,” she says.

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